1983 Starcraft restoration

[KingRhino]

Hope you don't mind if I tag along.

 

[JerryB1987]

Certainly not KingRhino. The structure of the boat is mostly done as I only have to finish building the boxes for the flotation foam in the stern. I decided to wait until I had the top back on to be sure I don't make them too tall. I am trying to decide if I want to rewire the boat as the wiring is probably the original 30 year old wire and none of the ends are marked. I have a cluster of wires I have to trace back to the panel to figure out which is positive and which is negative anyways so might just replace them. I don't like how untidy it looks with so many wires just hanging down by the battery, it makes no sense there would be so many connections going to the battery.

I started to take the out​board apart to replace the water pump and found I don't have the clearance to remove it since the tilt has no power so the wiring has to be the next project.

 

[JerryB1987]

I do have a little issue with having put the boat back together. It sat back on the hull fine and was easy to line the holes up to put the pop rivets and rub rail back on. BUT .....



The windshield flips open as this is a bow rider, as you can see the top no longer lines up so the top has bowed while it was sitting on my garage floor. So if you take the top off your boat you need to build a support that exactly matches the hull width and angle or find a way to strap the top to keep it from bowing. I am hoping the top will reform now that it is sitting on the hull and fully supported again. Not a huge deal to me as this window will be open most of the time anyways but it would be nice to have it sitting the way it was designed to.

 

[TruckDrivingFool]

In the pic on page 3 w/ the Mrs. sitting in the bow it looks like both windows tilt up, look to see if there is a gap under the bow liner section. If there is try weighting it down and see if that cures the windshield.

More likely your new floor came out a bit higher than the factory floor. If that's the case then I'd think you could do some trimming to the liner floor to get your windshield realigned. Then you'd only be left to tab the rest of the support back to the floor. I could also see fixing it by trimming some out of the middle of the consoles but I think the first option is the easier one.

Notice I said think, you may wait for some of the more in the know as to how structural that liner is.

 

[JerryB1987]

The picture is a little deceiving, the edge supports look like they move in the picture but they don't. Only the center section moves, in some closeup pictures you can see it laying on the port windshield. Putting some weight on the threshold to the bow liner sounds like a good idea, maybe it will reshape itself now that it is fully supported, there are 4 screws that go in the threshold that I haven't put back in yet as I wanted to see what the cap would do before locking it in position with screws into the floor.

 

[TruckDrivingFool]

Let me add this, usually on the forum its seen where people ask about a windshield that won't close or is hard/tight to close and it's because the floor is rotted and sagging which causes the consoles to droop pinching the gap between closed.

I think you have the opposite now with your new floor being higher and pushing them up thus spreading them. Try running a string from the top outer corners of the stationary parts to each other and see what the they look like in reference to the string.

 

[JerryB1987]

If you can follow the link ... its alive . I will get pictures and a little video when we splash the boat in a few hours, Will still have some touch-ups to do but the big items are done. hmmm I can see the link but it doesn't put up the full link. It's at facebook.com/anne.m.bennett.5/videos/10207765618009470/​

 

[TruckDrivingFool]

Linky no worky, not even if I C&P the text (says I don't belong to the audience) :blue:

 

[JerryB1987]

Yeah, I was afraid facebook might do that even though it was set to everyone. My camera is recharging then I will get some in from the splash event today. Went pretty good but now I have an engine issue to figure out.

 

[JerryB1987]

No Title

Hard to believe it only took a year for my first rebuild. Here are some before and after to show what was done.

​The bow seating area:



The backing was all rotted we barely had enough to make templates to recreate the seats.

Helm:
The steering was frozen in place. A bit of work to get it apart but then I got lucky and it worked so it was a matter of cleaning the dried grease off it and regreasing the shaft.

The floor:
Soft and nasty, it took a lot of work with a wet vacuum to get all the water out of the bilge, the drain was clogged with leaves and debris from sitting out in the weather with no cover for a couple of years. Once the floor was removed the stringers fell apart so no template from them either. Probably the most tedious part of replacing the floor was trying to get them adjusted so the floor would sit right.

No amount of scrubbing with store bought and home made formulas will clean the stained port seats. A slipcover will have to do for now at least.

There was no cover for the battery area, a piece of marine vinyl to match the bow seats and trim and it looks much better.

For the trailer I added guide poles to make it easier to get the boat back on the trailer, they are lit at the top as well.

When we took the boat out for its splash test the boat would not plane. Being the very end of the season we didn't do anything with it last year. The prop had a dent in it that could have been causing cavatation so that was replaced along with a new hub as the propeller was slipping.

I have a new fuel filter on order. Nearly impossible to find one of the original fuel filters since they are no longer made but I found a company online that had 5 and is supposed to include the housing, that should be here this week and the motor will be done so it will be time to play

A couple of posts back I was talking about the windshield not sitting properly. I think what happened is that when I added the foam to the bow area there wasn't enough of a hole for extra to escape so it lifted the floor a little. Can't be fixed as far as I can tell without taking the floor back out and I am not worried about it enough to do that. I can't see any reason to ever want to close that section of windshield anyways.